In this episode, Jay sits down with Prashant Agrawal, Founder & CEO at Impact Analytics, about the work he’s doing to transform retail forecasting with AI. Prashant shares about his career journey, including his time at McKinsey, his entrepreneurial ventures, and the founding of Impact Analytics. They discuss the role of AI and machine learning in retail, particularly in improving forecasting, pricing, and product allocation, the quick ROI retailers can expect from implementing AI-driven solutions, and insights into the evolving role of AI in business.

Prashant:

“We are always forecasting. As people, we're always trying to see what's going to happen tomorrow. And we use yesterday, right? That is the basis generally of what you do and what's the data out there. Now in retail before COVID, we were basically just using some kind of time series. Last year was X and we're going to go up a little or down a little. Now the challenge with that is that there is so many SKUs, so many stores potentially, you kind of just peanut butter spread it, right? What AI ML forecasting can do is give you a better first draft. So instead of actually having to manipulate this in Excel in any way, you can actually get a good first draft that is at a SKU level and then hone your intuition, your experience around that.”

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